“Artists are the gatekeepers of truth. We are civilization’s radical voice.”
— Paul Robeson, American artist, athlete, and activist
As the cumulative toll of gun violence in the U.S. continues its grim climb year after year, writers, visual artists, and composers have explored the issue in plays, collaborations, and music. They’re addressing gun violence’s impacts on individuals, families, communities, and society. And they’re pointing a way toward a more peaceful future.
Essay
Writer Jo Ann Beard was an administrator for a physics journal at the University of Iowa. On
her day off, a bitter graduate student shot her colleagues, killing four and injuring two. In “The Fourth States of Matter,” Beard recounts the events of that horrific day, interwoven with a backstory of coping with a collapsing marriage and a dying dog. Read the essay here: newyorker.com/magazine/1996/06/24/the-fourth-state-of-matter
Literature
In the contemporary romantic novel The Ones Who Got Away, by Roni Loren, survivors of a high school prom shooting gather 12 years later to be interviewed for a documentary. Two survivors, Liv and Finn, are former high school sweethearts who reconnect and grapple with both the past and their unresolved feelings for each other.
Theatre
A middle-aged man stands alone on the stage. Lifting stone after stone, he carefully builds a wall. While he works, he reminisces about raising his son, being a dad, and the erosion of Walt Whitman’s American spirit. The man works his way to a heart-wrenching revelation, lamenting, “What if I had recognized the moment it all started and made it a different moment?” See a clip from the Milwaukee Repertory Theaters’s 2016 world-premiere production of Joanna Murray-Smith’s American Song: youtube.com/watch?v=uGlEpacY-2Q
Poetry
“American Gun: A Poem by 100 Chicagoans” is a collective poem written by a mix of established writers and budding teenage poets, edited by Chris Green. The poem is written as a pantoum, with lines repeated twice, echoing the staccato of gun fire and the repetitive nature of gun violence. Watch a video performance of the poem from Big Shoulders Books: bigshouldersbooks.com/americangun
Music
Country singer Carrie Underwood’s 2018 album Cry Pretty includes the lilting, aching “The Bullet.” Underwood sings, “You can blame it on hate or blame it on guns, but mamas ain’t supposed to bury their sons.” Listen to the song on Youtube: youtube.com/watch?v=ehqUS_ua_2w
Visual Art
Following the massacre of 60 people at a concert in Las Vegas, artist Leslie Lee was moved to create the Soul Box Project. Lee invited people across the country to decorate origami boxes in memory of people injured or killed by gun violence. In October 2021, the project exhibited 200,000 soul boxes in Washington, D.C. — a powerful testament to the toll of gun violence in the U.S. Watch a video about the Soul Box mission: soulboxproject.org/about/mission/
Originally published in the Fall 2024/Winter 2025 print issue.
Julie Jacob is a communications professional and writer who focuses on healthcare and technology issues.
